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Obama—Bathing his Hands in the Blood of Innocents
Barack Obama has been fully initiated and baptized into the white supremacist world of greed, death and destruction. Having embarked upon this personal quest to show the world of white supremacy that he could be this model and exemplary “negro” they could trust, he continues to harvest for it the all too familiar fruit of global domination, racist terror and blood.
From one murderous act to the next; from giving the orders to carry out the cold blooded murder of three young Somalis (so-called pirates) while they were in the process of surrendering (let the truth be known), to the countless orders to drop drone missiles in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya, killing thousands of innocent civilians, Barack Obama has proven to his initiators time and again, that there isn’t one act of depravity he is not willing to carry out to show he is really one of them.
On the eve of Barack Obama’s emergence, many of us were engaged in various movements and acts of protests—a tradition going back several centuries—demanding justice for African people and other oppressed people in the world. Whether fighting to end slavery and colonialism, making demands for reparations, marching against social and economic injustice, demonstrating against globalists and neo-colonial agendas in the world, we had been a constant thorn in the side of the world of global white supremacy and it’s murderous pathologies.
Now, with Barack Obama at the helm, we seem not to be concerned about continuing our legacy of resistance and fighting for justice. In the face of overwhelming and continuing racism and greed, even here in the United States with the dismantling of public education, the continuing loss of jobs, the loss of Black homes and wealth due to racist banking loan practices, the shredding of the social safety net, to say nothing of the ongoing targeting of Black youth by the criminal “injustice” system, we have lost our voice and willingness to speak out and act against these ongoing assaults.
On the global stage, as we watch Barack Obama commit and accommodate one evil act after another, some Black people make the specious and bewildering argument that he should not be criticized because no one said anything when George W. Bush was in office. Of course, these charges are baseless, ignoring the many massive protests against the Bush presidency, with some of those demonstrations being the largest since the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. We are now looking at the specter that from now on, no matter who is in the White House, because of our refusal to criticize Barack Obama’s behavior, will have the effect of giving them carte blanche to act even more aggressively against our interests, including dropping bombs on Africa.
I understand of course for some people, this kind of criticism is an excuse and justification for their own unwillingness to act. Many people have become either lost in delusion thinking that just by Barack Obama “being there,” automatically makes things better for us, while others have become so lost in their own narrow, self-centered and hedonistic pursuits, they cannot move beyond these addictive self indulgences. I do remind them however, our willingness to look the other way at Obama crimes will only in the end compromise our own moral standing in the world.
Whether we acknowledge it or not, we do have an obligation to honor the legacy of those courageous Africans on whose shoulders we stand, people like Martin, Marcus, Malcolm, Harriet, Ida, Sojourner, Kwame, Patrice, Amilcar, Sankara, Zumbi, Nzinga, Yaa Asantewa and a long list of others, to continue to speak out and fight against racist terror in the world. It should not stymie our resolve just because the person responsible for carrying out some of this racist terror happens to be Black.
When, as the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama refuses to allow perennially racist America to participate in the World Conference Against Racism, we should speak out and criticize him for it; when he embraces and carries out the racist anti-African program called AFRICOM, having manifested itself in Libya and now playing out in other parts Africa, we should speak out and criticize him for it; when Barack Obama attempts to prevent Jean Bertrand Aristide from returning to Haiti while looking the other way and not uttering one word of protest against the return of the murderous Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, we should speak out and criticize him for it!; when he continues to arm the racist state of Israel allowing it to continue to slaughter innocent Palestinians and steal more of their land, we should speak out and criticize him for it; when Barack Obama agrees to provide arms and training to a racist and genocidal Indonesian military so that it can continue to kill our Brothers and Sisters in West Papua, we should speak out and criticize him for it; and when Barack Obama continues to give orders for countless of cowardly drone attacks that kill and maim innocent men, women and children, we should speak out against it!
We should fight against it as well. When we refuse to do so, and instead support Barack Obama “uncritically,” our support turns into encouragement, we become complicit in his (and America’s) crimes, and the blood of innocents that is now dripping from his hands, will become our new legacy.
A closing reflection
It is not lost on some of us, that long before the coming of Barack Obama, the United States, with its long tradition of rituals in blood, had become the largest criminal organization in the world, and those of us living here (in rapidly diminishing numbers), had been able to materially benefit from it’s criminal largess. For Black people who have benefited (in even more rapidly diminishing numbers), we need to remind ourselves that we have benefited despite being here, and not because of it, through a long tradition of just and moral struggle. Barack Obama has caused us to turn our backs on that tradition. I am beginning to hear rumblings from the graves...
Harold Green is an activist living in Los Angeles.
—Black Agenda Report, October 23, 2012